Conversations

During each of the six breakout sessions throughout the weekend, a large number of conversations will take place. This site will help you organize your plan for the weekend and provide the relevant information for each conversation. After signing in, search through the conversations below and mark the sessions you are interested in to populate your personal schedule on the right (or below if on your mobile phone).

Sharing examples and looking at case studies of how technology enhances teaching and learning, this workshop will focus on a history/social studies approach to teaching with technology, but will present tools that can be used in any classroom environment. Participants will experiment tech tools that have worked well in our daily teaching and have been practical and efficient for students' learning, especially in a project-based learning environment.

Everyone has a digital identity, like it or not. Responsibly developing and maintaining that identity are critical skills for educators and students. What role should educators play in developing these skills? What do educators need to do themselves to shape their digital identities and to serve as models for students?

Parents shouldn't have to ask, "What did you do in school today?" Students can create products to connect with parents, other students & personalized authentic audiences. We are going to discuss and share resources to help spread the word about the great things that are going on in our classrooms.

How might we “edu-fy” design thinking tools to make them responsive to the educator’s language and context? Join us to explore core approaches in user-centered design and to rebuild them for the educator: creating a responsive toolkit for educators to problem-solve and innovate in their schools!

Emerging technologies, current research, and innovative pedagogies have supported the ways that students learn and demonstrate what they understand. Unfortunately, the archaic practices of grades and grading still dominate assessment conversations, even though assessment is much more than a static number or letter. Students now make their thinking visible more easily, and it is up to educators to recognize and harness the value in new approaches to assessment.

This conversation will seek to provide a space to share best practices, resources & student reflection from Kensington CAPA's teacher led instructional redesign, in order to cultivate ideas & designs for teachers who desire to make positive change at their schools.

What does a student’s grade actually mean? Join a conversation led by NYC iSchool students and their teacher to learn how mastery-based learning and tracking can give students, families and teachers a genuine understanding of student knowledge. Find out what it’s like to really know what your students know while empowering students to take real ownership of their learning and walk away with plans (both big and small) to incorporate mastery tracking into your classroom.

Two parts.
One, since learning as much as I could about inquiry-driving project-based learning at Educon 2.6, I taught two classes in entrepreneurship at NYU that way and expect to teach a new class in leadership this Spring. I will give a progress report, open to constructive criticism, and look for ideas for teaching a brand-new leadership class.
Two, assuming we want to spread the practice, let's find ways to do so, to find others practicing, and create community. Also, let's check that assumption. How does this style of teaching and learning differ in universities compared to K-12? What's easier or harder for the student, teacher, learning institution, etc?

More often than not, professional development in schools follows the drive-by model: a guest speaker addresses the faculty, offering some practical advice for the classroom and then moves onto the next school. Faculty return to their classroom and then, eventually, are visited by another expert offering different practical advice. Without an opportunity for the faculty to fully engage in this professional development in a classroom setting, the lessons learned from each experience are often lost.
How then do we reimagine professional development. We need a new paradigm in professional development as well as in teaching and learning. Instead of offerring self-contained workshops in blocks as traditional PD does, let's consider a new model that is continuous and sustainable (as evidenced by the highly successful Marymount School Making and Learning Institute). Participants immerse themselves as part of a making and learning culture in a variety of ways and choose from a menu of items that works best for the participant and not what is best for the PD organizers. Join us for a lively discussion to rethink PD models as we drive beyond the drive by.

What does distributed leadership look like at both the school and classroom level? How do you set up systems that enable powerful levels of ownership for everyone? And how can distributed leadership be a fulcrum for organizational change?

This is a conversation led by the students of Project Stargazer. Learn about the process high-school students can take to develop their own collaborative projects, based on the experiences of a group of Science Leadership Academy students who created a student-led project in collaboration with The Franklin Institute and Boeing.

SLA Teachers share a toolkit for planning and facilitating powerful classroom discussions, especially the important conversations about identity, race, and power. SLA students will discuss the benefits and challenges of participating in inquiry-driven conversations, and will offer tips for success from their perspectives.

PBL (and I'm talking about ALL the PBLs here) has been around for awhile. What do you do to take your PBL practice to the next level? How do you +1 the PBL experience for your students AND for yourself?

Conversation Session 1 10–11:30am

Cross-Pollination Lunch 11:30am–1pm

Join us for a session of “lightning presentations” delivered by EduCon participants. Each presenter will have five minutes to share an idea, broken down into twenty slides, which automatically advance every fifteen seconds.